Sunday, March 29, 2009

Yoga, scrappy meals and the Ori Cafe

We've spent our weekend at an Iyengar yoga intensive. Its the last one to be held by our teacher as he is moving on to another state. I shall really miss him, he is a skilled and caring teacher, who teaches from his heart. He shall be missed by his students and now we all have to get used to a new teacher, and she to us. Interesting times.

With most of the weekend taken up with yoga there's not been much time for anything except scrap meals of hot cross buns from Bakehouse on Wentworth (the Springwood shop), toast and sandwiches as we dashed in and out from yoga.

We've also eaten out at the Ori Cafe in Springwood, dinner last night and breakfast today, feel a bit guilty about purchasing food in our 'not buying it' mode, but we never took restaurants or cafes off our list. The nice thing about the Ori is that the restaurant is separated out from the main drinking bar with its pokies and there is a lovely outside courtyard for summer and in winter, with its open fire, it can be charming and atmospheric.

The Ori's dinner menu has a large range of good quality pub food such as steaks, pasta, fish, and a decent choice of vegetarian options, plus they have a Specials board which changes frequently. We shared our dinner at the Ori with J1 and J2, it wasn't a late night as we had a pre-dawn start this morning, but our meals were good and the company better. We shared some brusectta and garlic bread, the bread was rather dull but the toppings were tasty. For mains, I had a flavorsome but a too large serving of gnocchi with roast tomatoes, baked ricotta and mixed veggies. The others chose from the Specials board, a pork chop with mash and veg and the fish of the day. Once again, delicious but rather large servings. Dinner prices range between $12 to $29 ish, pretty standard for pub food these days. Deserts are the standard cafe cakes and tarts that you'd expect. I had a scoop of ice cream, pretty dull with its swirl of bottled chocolate topping, my companions had the sticky date pud and a citron tart which they enjoyed- but once again the serves were too large I felt.

The Ori does good coffee, a very hard commodity to find in the lower Blue Mountains as well as a decent breakfast fry-up. For our breakfast this morning we both had the vegetarian poached eggs, on a corn pancake and field mushroom stack, very delicious, though the presentation was a tad 'try-hard' what with the stacking and swizzles of some sort of vinaigrette dressing to make a pattern on the large white plate.

The Ori is a great local place, its wait staff are pleasant and professional, meals arrive quickly and the food is what you'd expect, good quality pub food at pub prices. Its also very popular with locals so you'll need to book.